Study Reveals Expanding Medicaid Increases Emergency Room Visits

(Washington, D.C.) - An experiment in the state of Oregon has debunked one of the main promises of The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare - that providing insurance to the uninsured would get them cheaper preventative care and decrease costly emergency room visits.

But in 2008 - before the national health care law - the State of Oregon added thousands of new enrollees to Medicaid via lottery. The experiment studied the behavior of the group that won the lottery and those who did not. The study published in Science revealed that instead of using emergency room care less often, these new enrollees actually used emergency rooms 40 percent more than uninsured people did - in part because there aren't enough doctors to see them elsewhere. It was previously reported that new Medicaid enrollees in Oregon experienced no significant health improvements over those who remained uninsured.

Expansion of Medicaid is one of the major provisions of the health care law - one that will cost taxpayers more than $700 billion over the next ten years. It was argued that expanding Medicaid would reduce emergency room use, improve health care for low-income Americans, and contribute to lower health care costs over time. If the results in Oregon are experienced by states that have approved the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, taxpayers, doctors, and patients will all be victimized by more broken promises.

Daniel Garza, Executive Director of The LIBRE Initiative released the following statement:

"The health care law may have been well-intentioned, but it is actually doing more harm than good. People were told that costs would go down, choices would increase, and America would benefit from better health outcomes overall. For millions of Americans, none of these promises have come true.

As the health care law is implemented, many Latinos are surprised to find out that they don't earn enough to qualify for assistance in purchasing private insurance, and the ACA offers them nothing more than government-run care. As millions more are dumped into Medicaid, they will see longer waits, crowded emergency rooms, and an inferior quality of care due to shortage of doctors. This is not what supporters of this law promised and it is not what patients expected. We can do better."

Learn more about "The Accountability Project" campaign and LIBRE's efforts to keep elected officials accountable for supporting the flawed Obamacare law that is causing families everywhere to lose their current health care plan and lose their full time jobs. They are elected to make the right decisions for the people - let's keep them accountable.